Mary Theodosia Palmer Banks

Wife of Union General Nathaniel Prentice Banks

On April 11, 1847, Mary Theodosia Palmer of Providence, Rhode Island, married Nathaniel Banks, after a lengthy courtship. They had one son and two daughters together. She served as the first lady of Massachusetts when her husband was the governor (1858-1861).

Nathaniel Prentice Banks was born at Waltham, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1816, the son of a foreman at a Waltham textile mill. Until the age of 14, he attended a one–room school run by his father’s company, and then began working at the mill as a bobbin boy. He also assisted his father in making furniture, and after a few years apprenticed with a mechanic.


Mary Theodosia Palmer Banks
Her dress has three rows of ruffles along the bottom. It has a slight train in the back. Over the dress is a coat with large pagoda sleeves. Along the wrist and sleeve of the coat is lace. A large piece of lace is also decorating the front of the coat. In her hands she holds a closed umbrella. Her hair is split down the middle and pulled back. She is wearing a bonnet on her head.

Banks read widely, attended lectures in Boston given by public figures such as Daniel Webster, participated in a drama club, organized a dancing school, and joined a temperance society. Around the same time, he was also responsible for editing several weekly newspapers and a paper for the factory in which he worked.

While still working at the factory, Banks was also studying law; he was admitted to the bar at 23 years of age, but soon abandoned an unsuccessful law practice in Boston. He also started a debating society, and his energy and his ability to captivate audiences as a public speaker would serve him well later in life.

Political Life
Banks entered politics during the campaign of 1840, speaking locally for the Democratic Party and editing the Lowell Democrat. When the newspaper folded the next year, he established the Middlesex Reporter in Waltham, but that closed in 1842. Another foray into editing also ended with the failure of the publication, the Rumford Journal (1851–1852).

Banks ran unsuccessfully for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1844 and 1847, before winning the first of four consecutive one–year terms in 1848 (serving 1849–1852). On federal issues, he supported low tariffs and territorial expansion. While remaining publicly cautious on the slavery question, he developed close ties with Free Soilers, and was elected by a Democratic–Free Soil coalition as Speaker of the Massachusetts House for the 1851 and 1852 sessions.

In 1852, Banks was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives by a slim margin, with Free Soil support but some opposition from his own party. In Congress, he condemned the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened those territories to slavery, and broke with the presidential administration of Democrat Franklin Pierce.

Banks joined the American Party (Know Nothings) and was reelected to Congress in 1854 by a coalition of the Know–Nothings, Free Soil Whigs, and other Democrats opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act. At the opening of the Thirty-Fourth Congress the anti-Nebraska men gradually united in supporting Banks for speaker, and after one of the bitterest contests in the history of Congress – lasting from December 3, 1855, until February 2, 1856 – he was elected Speaker of the House by three votes on the 133rd ballot. As speaker, he distributed committee positions proportionally among the parties and impressed fellow congressmen with his aptitude for the position.

In 1856, Banks joined the new Republican Party, supporting its unsuccessful presidential nominee, John C. Fremont, and winning reelection to Congress as a Republican. This has been called the first national victory of the Republican party.

Banks resigned his seat in December 1857, and was governor of Massachusetts from 1858 to 1861, a period marked by notable reforms. He supported public education, penal reform, a reduction of the waiting period for naturalized citizens before they could vote – from 14 years to two – and cuts in expenditures during the economic depression that followed the financial panic of 1857. He vetoed a bill allowing black men to serve in the state militia.

In 1860, Banks received a few votes for the Republican vice presidential nomination, which went to Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. In early 1861, he relocated his family to Chicago, where he succeeded George B. McClellan as president of the Illinois Central railway.


Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, United States Army
Photographed by Matthew Brady

The Civil War
Although as governor he had been a strong advocate of peace, he was one of the earliest to offer his services to President Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him major general of volunteers on May 16, 1861. Banks was one of the most prominent of the volunteer officers. He was first assigned to Annapolis, Maryland, first as division commander and then as department commander, and was an important part of the effort to keep Maryland, a slave state, in the Union.

Unfortunately, Banks had no military experience, but shared the qualities of many political generals. He had courage, but was short on talent; he was a model soldier except in the fields of intuition and training. His heavy mustache and well-groomed appearance complemented his tall, thin frame. It was said that he had the air of one used to being in command.

Shenandoah Valley Campaign
When General George B. McClellan entered upon his Peninsular Campaign (March - July 1862), the important duty of defending Washington DC from the army of Stonewall Jackson fell to the corps commanded by Banks. In the spring, Banks was ordered to move against Thomas Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.

With 38,000 men, Banks committed himself to driving Jackson from the valley in the hopes of linking up with McClellan and his coming advance on Richmond, the Confederate seat of government. But Jackson, with superior forces, defeated him at Winchester on May 25, and forced him back to the Potomac River. By early June, Jackson had driven Union forces from the Valley. He captured such a large amount of supplies left by the fleeing Union troops that the Confederates nicknamed the Union commander, Commissary Banks.

After that military failure, he was subordinated to Union General John Pope. As commander of the Army of Virginia's 2nd Corps (June – September 1862), Banks was again defeated by Jackson at Cedar Mountain (August 9), where the Union suffered heavy casualties, and Banks didn't perform well at Second Bull Run (Manassas). His decisions at Cedar Mountain were investigated by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.

Department of the Gulf
Banks briefly commanded the Military District of Washington, DC (September – October 1862), before President Lincoln selected him to replace General Benjamin Butler as commander of the Department of the Gulf (December 1862 – September 1864). Headquartered in Union–occupied New Orleans, Banks released political prisoners, eased trade restrictions, introduced a system of sharecropping between former slaves and masters, and implemented other changes aimed at appeasing the residents. He also organized several regiments of black Union soldiers, the Corps d'Afrique.

Militarily, Banks continued to perform poorly. Under orders to ascend the Mississippi River and join forces with General Ulysses S. Grant, who was then trying to capture Vicksburg, Banks first pushed a Confederate force up the Teche Bayou and marched to Alexandria, Louisiana, hauling off slaves, cotton, and cattle from a rich agricultural area.

Nathaniel Banks was told that when he united his army with Grant's, he would assume command of both. Banks, then, had the opportunity to become the leading general in the West – perhaps the most important general in the war. But he squandered what successes he had, never rendezvoused with Grant's army, and ultimately orchestrated some of the greatest military blunders of the war.

Because Banks had concentrated on political matters in his first six months as commander of the Department of the Gulf, his attack on Port Hudson was delayed and uncoordinated with the plans of General Grant. Assaults on May 27 and June 14, 1863, resulted in large numbers of Union casualties, but Port Hudson surrendered on July 9, after notification that Vicksburg had fallen to Grant. The entire Mississippi River was then under Union control. Banks received the official Thanks of Congress for Port Hudson, although credit was really due to Grant.

In the autumn of 1863, at the government's direction, Banks organized a number of expeditions to Texas, chiefly for the purpose of preventing the French in Mexico from aiding the Confederates, and to secure stores of cotton, and to restore a Unionist government to the state. He planned a quick thrust at the mouth of the Sabine River, then an overland move upon Houston and Galveston. The invasion resulted in a Union disaster at the Battle of Sabine Pass on September 8, 1863.

Six weeks later, Banks left New Orleans with twenty-three ships and landed an invasion force at Brazos Santiago, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, on November 2, 1863. Union troops soon occupied nearby Brownsville, Texas, and began to drive northward along the coast and up the Rio Grande to shut off the trade coming through the Confederacy's back door. Banks returned to New Orleans just one month after the landing at Brazos Santiago, pressed by his superiors to invade East Texas by way of the Red River.


Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks
Statue of Nathaniel Prentice Banks at Waltham, Massachusetts
Sculpted by H. H. Kitson; dedicated 1908

Red River Campaign
The Red River Campaign consisted of a series of battles fought along the Red River in Louisiana during the from March 10 to May 22, 1864. The campaign was fought between the 30,000 Union troops under the command of Major General Banks and Confederate troops under the command of General Richard Taylor (son of former President Zachary Taylor), whose strength varied from 6,000 to 12,000.

Banks disagreed with the plan, hoping instead to mount an expedition to capture Galveston, but the movement was ordered by Chief of Staff Henry Halleck. Halleck's plan was approved by President Lincoln, and General Banks went ahead with it under official protest.

Banks' Army was routed at the Battle of Mansfield, and retreated twenty miles to make a stand the next day at the Battle of Pleasant Hill. They continued the retreat to Alexandria, where they rejoined with part of the Federal Inland Fleet. That naval force under David Porter had joined the Red River Campaign intending to take on cotton as lucrative prizes of war, and Banks had allowed rich speculators to come along for the gathering of cotton.

Banks was dependent on Porter's fleet to continue his retreat, but the fleet was trapped above the falls at Alexandria due to dangerously low water levels on the river that supplied the army. Banks approved a plan to build wing dams as a means to raise what little water was left in the channel. In ten days, 10,000 troops under fire built two dams, and managed to rescue Porter's fleet and Banks' army.

The failure of the campaign effectively ended Banks' military career. When he arrived near the Mississippi, was met by General Edward Canby, who replaced him as the field commander of the Army of the Gulf on the spot.

President Lincoln ordered Banks to return to Washington, DC, to lobby for the president's Reconstruction program. Banks again appeared before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to defend his role in the Red River Campaign. The controversy surrounding profits from cotton confiscated during the campaign dogged his later political career. Admiral Porter realized a substantial sum of money during the campaign from the sale of cotton.

The secret presidential investigating commission headed by conservative Democrats William Farrar Smith and James T. Brady in early 1865 devoted considerable effort to trying to connect Banks with vice and irregular trading permits in the New Orleans area. The somewhat one-sided final commission report, which did not specifically accuse him of wrongdoing, was never released.

Following Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Banks again served briefly as commander of the Department of the Gulf (April – June 1865) before being mustered out of the U. S. Army on August 24, 1865. Congress later awarded him a $1,200 annual pension.

In late 1865, Banks was elected as a Republican from Massachusetts to fill a vacant seat in Congress. As chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (1865–1873), Banks criticized the British for refitting Confederate ships during the Civil War, voted for the purchase of Alaska from Russia, but failed to gain passage of a resolution allowing the president to establish Haiti and Santo Domingo (today, the Dominican Republic) as U.S. protectorates.

In July 1872, upset with President Ulysses S. Grant over administration scandals, Banks announced his support of challenger Horace Greeley, the presidential nominee of the Liberal Republican and Democratic Parties. The endorsement cost Banks his congressional seat that fall, but the next year he was elected as an independent to the Massachusetts Senate, where he supported labor reform and women's suffrage.

In 1874, running as an independent, Banks was returned to Congress, and two years later won reelection as a Republican. He served as U.S. marshal of Boston from 1878 until resigning in 1888, while under investigation for the misuse of funds.

Banks was reelected to Congress in 1888, although he was showing signs of dementia. After failing to win nomination in 1890, he retired from public service. He spent his last years at home with his family, plagued by what is assumed to be Alzheimer's disease.

Nathaniel Prentice Banks died at Waltham, Massachusetts, on September 1, 1894, at the age of 78. He was survived by a son and two daughters.

SOURCES
Nathaniel P. Banks
Red River Campaign
Nathaniel Prentice Banks
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
Handbook of Texas Online
Governors of Massachusetts
Wikipedia: Nathaniel Prentice Banks
Nathaniel Prentice Banks (1816 – 1894)
King of Louisiana, 1862-1865, and Other Government Work